


A few bruises and a kiss

by Perspicacia



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, First Meetings, Trying to kill each other and flirting at the same time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-27
Updated: 2017-11-27
Packaged: 2019-02-03 06:50:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,984
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12743208
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Perspicacia/pseuds/Perspicacia
Summary: Asajj Ventress tried to kill a lot of Jedi. No one of them had ever been as exasperating as Quinlan Vos.Quinlan Vos had saved his  friend  Obi-Wan from a lot of troubles. No one of them had ever been as fascinating as Asajj Ventress.





	A few bruises and a kiss

**Author's Note:**

  * For [IluvPasteisdeBelem](https://archiveofourown.org/users/IluvPasteisdeBelem/gifts).



> Many, many thanks to Aeremaee, best beta in the whole world!

More than anything else, Asajj wants revenge. Some days, she’s more precise than others about whom she will extract that revenge from, but the Jedi are always high on the list.

She had killed a few, some whose names she didn’t even know. Still she’s surprised the day when, in one of their duels, Kenobi misses a ceding parry, twists his ankle in the process, diverts her blade less than he should and finally rolls onto the floor with a yell, his lightsaber out of reach, his good hand pressed to his injured shoulder. He’s better than that, better than making a sloppy mistake in a life and death situation.

For a second they observe each other and she sees the bags under his eyes and the aura of exhaustion. Then she goes to push her blade into his throat, decided to make it quick.

She doesn’t have the time, can only push herself out of arm’s reach at the last second. Kenobi is not alone and the warning of the Force came almost too late. Kenobi didn’t come alone and she’s so used to Skywalker’s solar presence in the Force when searching for Kenobi’s potential help, that she didn’t perceive this one and could have lost her head for it.

The other Jedi is larger, bigger, and taller than Kenobi, a male Kiffar, wearing only part of the Jedi uniform, leaving his arms bare. He uses Juyo, viciously, and she scrambles to use the correct defence against it after battling Kenobi and his Soresu.

They battle their way across the building; it’s evident after a few minutes that he is trying to drive her away from the hurt Kenobi, but she can’t seem to turn this duel around, forced into a defensive position with never a second to counter-strike.

“You’re only offering him a moment. I will have his head just after yours!” she spits, furious, when he parries one of her strikes. Where a minute before she had been almost sad to kill Kenobi after months of duels, from planets to spaceships to space stations, now she’s full of hate. How dare that man take her away from her prize? With Kenobi’s head, Dooku himself would finally have taken her seriously!

“Oh, sweet thing,” the man laughs, not even out of breath, “a Jedi might feel vexed. Am I not good enough for you?” And he strikes at one of her blades in a bold move with such strength that her teeth rattle.

“I can assure you, everything dear Obi-Wan can do for you, I can too.” He almost takes her hand on the last word in a reverse attack and she needs to retreat again.

“To be honest, he can be a little boring, no? It’s even getting worse with age. Better let him breathe a little, sweetheart, after all, I’m here now.”

She’s losing. She’s too tired after fighting with Kenobi and not in the habit of facing adversaries who use such physical strength. She will lose this duel and die unavenged. Or worse, she will be taken prisoner.

With a rage filled cry, she sheathes one of her blades and catches the detonator on her belt. He reacts as she thought he would: when the explosion blossoms in the foundations of the building, he abandons their duel and runs to his fallen comrade, letting her escape.

Later, she searches carefully in the Separatist files about the Jedi until she finds a name.

Quinlan Vos.

****

“That’s why I like working with you, we always meet the most interesting people,” Quinlan jokes, when they’re safe from the blast. He had used the Force to enhance his speed and rush them out. Behind them the building is still collapsing. Obi-Wan is still carelessly thrown over his shoulder.

“Let me down,” his friend protests, “or I will throw up on your backside.”

“Save people’s life and this is how they thank you,” Quinlan grumbles, but he’s careful when he puts the other man on his feet and quick to catch him when Obi-Wan stumbles. The Kiffar opens his tunic, batting away protesting hands, and inspects the wound.

“She has a mean strike, your friend. You will have another scar, and a big one. But the chicks dig it.”

“She’s not... How can you… _The chicks_ , Quinlan, really, by the Force, you’re… You know what, I’m not entering that discussion. Either of those discussions.” And he starts walking in the direction of their ship. Limping, in fact, in the direction of their ship.

Quinlan sighs, joins him, and silently offers his back. Yes, Obi-Wan could do it under his own power, but walking on that ankle would only aggravate it, and a speedy recovery is important. There is no need for pride between two Jedi, especially two who’ve known each other since the Creche. In silence, Obi-Wan climbs on his back. He’s heavy with the plastron he’s wearing, but Quinlan has supported hurt friends and foes over longer distances and direr circumstances. He starts walking, as quick as he can because he wants his infuriating friend patched up.

Obi-Wan murmurs a thank you against his ear and Quinlan smiles. Still, he can’t stop a last quip. “I should have gone with the lady. Pretty sure she would be more fun. What’s her name?”

“You’re not going after her.”

“You can’t keep all the fun ones to yourself.”

“You and I have a very different definition of fun. But she’s called Ventress. Asajj Ventress.”

 

******

After that first meeting, the thrice-damned Kiffar seemed to be everywhere. Everywhere!

He foils one of Dooku’s plans in the Besh Gorgon system. He saves another Jedi, an aging male Borlorian, from General Grievous in the battle of Felucia.

And everywhere Asajj goes, he seems to get there just before her. Smirking like he’s trying to get into her bed instead of trying to capture or kill her and with a lit lightsaber in his hand to stop her from her objectives.

“Ehhh, you got better, congratulations sweet girl!” he even exclaims when she, at their third duel, scores a long gash on his tight.

With a shriek, she attacks again. It’s still true even if the delivery line is totally inappropriate for a non-attachment warrior monk. She’s getting better against him and that’s not surprising when she reprogrammed her training droids with his fighting style. He’s the man who stopped her from killing Kenobi and since he is not on the battlefield right now, she has no problem electing Vos as her number one target.

And Asajj likes to be prepared. She trains, day after day, and she prepares herself mentally. Her rage won’t be enough against him, like it’s never enough against the pain in the backside that is Skywalker. She does her research more patiently than most of the time, but she doesn’t find a lot of things about him in their files, even in the Republic ones that Dooku had access to, the Force knows how. A large part of it is redacted, a clue about what her Master calls “Shadow’s activities.” She doesn’t really understand how such a flashy man could fill such missions, until three months later when the intelligence leak she was sent to stop on one of their bases is revealed to be Quinlan Kriffin Vos, minus the Jedi tunics and with extra leather pants.

“See you later, sweet thing!” he yells when he escapes on her own speeder after a long chase over the roofs, Force-jumping like they’re playing instead of trying to decapitate each other.

“Stop calling me that!” she yells in return, despite herself. She must acknowledge one thing: he’s more fun than Kenobi, the fire in his eyes full of a joy that the other man is lacking. Sometimes, late in the night when she’s alone, she allows herself to think back to his taunts. Sometimes, she almost smiles.

 

****

It almost ends in the Candoras sector. For both of them. Quinlan was allowed to be a little vexed; he’d had great plans to bring her back alive, unarmed, to the Jedi. The things she could tell them about Dooku, about the Separatists! The Jedi had grown into their roles as Generals and could salvage a victory from many a battle, but intelligence is the true way to win a war.

And sometimes, when he has occasion to observe her when she doesn’t know it, he thinks it could be a chance for her, too. He was always a little bit sentimental.

He has left Quartzedge Port, on the planet Poln Minor, for the underground caverns, tracking a Separatist spy that he unmasked but couldn’t stop before she stole a shuttle, four systems away. It seems these days he’s too busy tracking spies to go back to what should be his primary task: finding the Sith Master. All Jedi seem too busy these days, putting out fires left and right with never a moment of calm.

What he doesn’t know is that Ventress has come to the system—to extract a Separatist spy that a Jedi just unmasked. They meet in a cavern, lightsaber clashing against lightsaber, his blade versus her two. For a moment he forgets everything about the spy.

Ventress dances just out of his reach, taunts him, something in her expression more amused than her usual cruel smirk, as graceful as a bird, as lethal as a rancor. The Force is singing danger in his ear, trumpeting almost and he wants to yell at It that yes, he knows, he’s literally busy with the Darksider right now! No need to warn him about danger when said danger is already trying to cut him in two!

And then the roof of the cavern explodes. He will never forget to listen to the Force or think he knows the reason of its warning again and Master Tholme would cuff him on the head if he was here, knighted or not! Apparently, the spy thinks her chances are better without the Jedi and also without her backup.

“How shocking that a traitor would betray people again…” he taunts when Ventress swears when she understands the truth. She immediately Force-pushes him into a wall and seems ready to follow with her blade when another explosions occurs, forcing them to run.

They don’t stop for three days. Three days of danger, one occurrence of fire, too many strange creatures that make him question exactly what they were mining here in the past, and so many kilometres of tunnel that he can’t feel his feet anymore.

“That’s it, I’m stealing Obi-Wan’s seat on the Council, and he can come play with the thirty meters long man-eating worm with the bad breath,” he grumbles at their fourth meeting with one of those beasts. Every animal is important in the natural circle, every one of them important in the Living Force, but really, he could have done without ever meeting one and he never loses an occasion to tell his only public: Ventress herself.

“More running and less talking.”

“You love my voice.”

“I will cut out your tongue!”

“Aggressive kisser are you?”

“Shut up and run!”

He almost gets eaten three times and Ventress two, but they survive. Together. When they finally find the exit he hesitates, his hand on his lightsaber. He should take it from his belt. He should fight her, again. He should.

“I’m going that way,” he finally announces.

“And me, that way,” she says, low. Then: “See you on the battlefield, Vos.”

She starts to turn and he stops her, a hand on her shoulder. It’s a testimony to the last few days that she doesn’t try to take his hand for that. He kisses her, quick, just once, a very chaste kiss, then turns away and starts walking again, in the direction of Quartzedge Port.

He can feel her eyes on his back for a long, long time.


End file.
